On Wednesday of this week, the University of California Board of Regents will meet to consider a number of controversial proposals, among them a revised version of a proposed “intolerance policy.” The policy, which was prompted initially by allegations of harassment of Jewish students, had met with wide criticism when first proposed last Fall from advocates…
BY HANK REICHMAN It has become a commonplace assumption that conservatives are a vanishing breed in academia and that American colleges and universities are inherently hostile to right-leaning political views. This assumption fuels not only the often tiresome complaints from the right about “political correctness” on campus, but also the increasingly destructive assault by Republican-controlled…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday word came that Simon Newman, the notorious president of Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland, had resigned. Newman, readers will recall, was the fool who spoke of drowning at-risk freshmen like “bunnies” and who summarily dismissed (and subsequently reinstated) two long-time faculty members for “disloyalty.” (For background go here, here, and…
BY HANK REICHMAN This Friday, March 4, Alice Dreger is scheduled to speak on academic freedom at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, under the sponsorship of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE). Dreger is the author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, an engaging, personal,…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I posted a piece about the decision by Williams College President Adam Falk to cancel a speech by John Derbyshire, a controversial conservative. Then yesterday William Covino, President of California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA), announced that he would cancel a talk by Ben Shapiro, editor-at-large of the notorious Breitbart…
BY HANK REICHMAN Melissa A. Click, the communications professor whose actions during a student protest last fall sparked controversy, has been fired by the University of Missouri’s Board of Curators, according to a statement from the system. The action was apparently taken last night, in a closed session, by a vote of 4-2. “The board…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last year George Yancy, a professor of philosophy at Emory University, conducted a series of 19 interviews with philosophers and public intellectuals on the issue of race, published in the New York Times feature “The Stone,” which seeks to bring the insights of philosophy (as in “the philosopher’s stone”) to bear on issues…
BY MARTIN KICH Students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi have been physically attacked, have been held in judicial custody, and have had charges of sedition filed against them for espousing views challenging to the state. There have also been vociferous calls from the Indian political Right to shut down this premier…
BY HANK REICHMAN President Barack Obama today announced his intent to nominate Carla D. Hayden as Librarian of Congress. Hayden would be the first woman and the first African American to hold the position. Carla Hayden is CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, a position she has held since 1993. She…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last summer Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 11, also known as the “campus carry” law, at a shooting range. The law permits the concealed carry of guns in dorms, classrooms, and buildings at state universities and community colleges, while leaving individual schools some latitude to keep parts of their properties firearm-free, extending…